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He has something to say upon the general agriculture, and more especially upon the olive and oil industry. Some remarks upon the numerous "mummeries" and festas of the inhabitants lead him into a long digression upon the feriae of the Romans.
In this same year there was no aedile owing to a lack of candidates, and the praetors and the tribunes performed the aediles' duties: also no praetor urbanus was appointed for the Feriae, but some of the regular praetors discharged his functions. Other matters in the city and in the rest of Italy were under the charge of one Gaius Maecenas, a knight, both then and for a long time afterward.
Besides, every private family had a number of feriae, kept either by way of rejoicing for some benefit, or mourning for some calamity. Every time it thundered, the day was kept holy. Every ninth day was a holiday, thence called nundinae quasi novendinae.
At each hour the Kyrie Eleison and ferial prayers were said on bended knees and the hours terminated as do the hours of Holy Week still with Pater Noster and Miserere. Ferias are divided into three classes, major ferias, privileged ferias and non-privileged. Non-privileged feriae are the feriae of Lent and Advent, Quarter Tense or Ember days and Rogation Monday.
The chariot of Minerva while returning to the Capitol from a horse-race was dashed to pieces, and the statue of Jupiter at Albanum sent forth blood at the very time of the Feriae from its right shoulder and right hand. These were advance indications to them from Heaven, and the rivers also in their land gave out entirely or began to flow backward.
Trifles like the erotikos, a study based on Plato's theory of love, the story of Arion, the feriae alsienses, in which he humorously advises the prince to take a holiday, the laudes fumi et pulveris, a rhetorical exercise, show that he was quite at home in a less ambitious vein.
+603+. In general, sacred seasons, times of great communal ceremonies, demand the avoidance of ordinary pursuits, which, it is feared, may imperil the success of the ceremonies by necessitating contact with things infected or nonsacred. For Greece we have the Plynteria, on the principal day of which work was suspended; in Rome the feriae were such days, regular or occasional.
Of a similar nature marking, as Ovid tells us, the completion of the sowing was the feriae sementivae or Paganalia, associated with the earth-goddesses, Ceres and Tellus. Meal-cakes and a pregnant sow were the offerings, the beasts who had helped in the ploughing were garlanded, and prayer was made for the seed resting in the ground.
Hence the early Christians called the days of the week feriae. Why did the Church adopt the word feriae? Hence she adopted the word feria, to denote the Christian rest in the Lord, the Christian peace and the abstinence from all sin, and that each and every day should be consecrated to God. In the small hours the Sunday psalms without antiphons were recited. Vespers had daily, fixed psalms.
Mars is the Roman, Quirinus the Sabine deity; and we see that the two tribes had, before they were united, very similar worships, which were both kept up after the union. The feriae Latinae, or Latin festival, celebrated on Mons Albanus, is common to the Latin tribes and commemorates their union.
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